The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for June 07, 2016

Salute to Mell.

..how about a bridge…

lucky guess

It’s full name is Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations. That is what shows on some of the legal documents/proclamations. Grew up right across the border in Mass.

Thanks for the tribute to Mel. At first, I didn’t remember the name. Then I got it.

It’s our smallest state and has just two counties. Its state bird is the Rhode Island Red hen.

As a kid I thought those were the ugliest characters in the funnies!

The island now named Aquidneck was originally called “Rhode Island”, and was a separate colony from the colony of Providence Plantations. When they joined, they became “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations”.

And the word “plantation”, by the way, originally meant “colony”, or “very large estate”. (It’s the same idea whether you’re planting a seed or planting a new nation.) So, although the word “plantation” has an ugly history in America, “Providence Plantations” had nothing to do with that; it’s just that some people in 1636 thought “Providence Plantations” made a cooler name than “Providence Colony”.

I JUST saw this – 5 years later. Mell was my dad. Thanks for the strip!